ASSASSINATION ARCHIVES

AND RESEARCH CENTER

A CIA Tutorial: How to Avoid Providing Files

13 SEPTEMBER, 2017 © 2017 – Bill Simpich

With the October releases coming up, we should keep in mind what the ARRB has already told us we will not find.

For those of us who research the Mexico City story, it has always been very frustrating to find that there is no organized way to find the cables and dispatches between Mexico City and Headquarters, or between these two entities and JMWAVE in Miami, except within carefully circumscribed dates.

What we have run into amounts to a CIA tutorial on how to avoid providing information that is mandated under the law.

Eusebio Azcue Lopez, former Cuban consul Mexico City

As shown below, the listing of files for JMWAVE begins on November 21, and the listing of files for HQ and Mexico City begins on October 1.  Very unhelpful for putting together the Oswald story, as well as the events prior to the assassination in Miami.

But not all of the files are missing.  A number of the files within this timeframe do exist – simply in a less organized format.  Many memos are tucked away in various other files, such as the files on Cuban consul Eusebio Azcue in CIA microfilm, Reel 2.

In fact, it is probable that most or all of these files could have been provided by the CIA if they had simply cross-indexed the files within their own Records Integration Division.

The National Archives has the duty to index the files themselves, and send a demand to the CIA for the missing files.  The Act is in effect until “the Archivist certifies to the President and the Congress that all assassination-related records have been made available to the public in accordance with this Act.”

This is yet another reason we need a new JFK Records Act with stronger enforcement powers.

From the ARRB Final Report in 1999:

The Review Board determined that, while much of the Mexico City Station cable traffic
existed in the JFK Collection, the traffic contained numerous gaps, particularly in com-
munications between Mexico City and the CIA Station in Miami, JMWAVE.

The Review Board deemed these gaps to be significant because both CIA stations played roles in U.S. operations against Cuba.

The cable traffic that the Review Board reviewed in the CIA’s sequestered collection commences on October 1, 1963, and contains the earliest known communication—an October 8, 1963, cable—between the Mexico City Station and CIA Headquarters concerning Lee Harvey  Oswald.

In 1995, the Review Board submitted a formal request for additional information
regarding the above-referenced gaps in CIA cable traffic. CIA did not locate additional
traffic for the specified periods. CIA completed its response to this request in February

1998 explaining that:

In general, cable traffic and dispatches are not available as a chronological collection and thus, for the period 26 through 30 September 1963 it is not possible to provide cables and dispatches in a chronological/package form.

During the periods in question, the Office of Communications (OC) only held cables long enough to ensure that they were successfully transmitted to the named recipient. On occasion. . .cables were sometimes held for longer periods but not with the intention of creating a long-term reference collection.

The Review Board was not able to locate cables or dispatches from the following periods:

Mexico City Station to Headquarters (September 26–30, 1963);
Headquarters to Mexico City Station (September 26–30, 1963);
JMWAVE to Headquarters (September 26–November 21,1963);
Headquarters to JMWAVE (September 26–November 21, 1963);
and all traffic between the Mexico City Station and JMWAVE for the periods September 26–October 20, 1963 and November 22–December 30, 1963.
In addition, CIA informed the Review Board that it did not have a repository for cables

and dispatches from stations in the 1960s.

Although originating offices maintained temporary chronological files, the offices

generally destroyed the temporary records in less than ninety days.

After the assassination, the Office of the Deputy Director of Plans ordered relevant CIA offices to retain cables that they would have otherwise destroyed.  The HSCA used the remaining cable traffic to compile its Mexico City chronology.

Had CIA offices strictly applied the ninety-day rule, there might have been copies of cable traffic commencing as early as August 22, 1963, rather than October 1, 1963, available to CIA on November 22, 1963.

How Shenon and Sabato came to Fake News in JFK’s Murder

August 15, 2017 

JFKFacts.org

After more than fifty years and zero quantum of proof since the JFK assassination, Philip Shenon and Larry J. Sabato insist on the out-worn hypothesis “Castro sorta done it” while reporting how the CIA came to doubt the official story.

From a batch of documents recently released on line by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), they have cherry-picked an unauthored 1975-CIA memo that specifically:

• “Noted the failure of the CIA, FBI and the Warren Commission to interview a key witness in Mexico City—Silvia Duran, the Mexican woman who worked in the Cuban consulate and was reported to have had the affair with Oswald.”

• “Offered a detailed theory [about] how Oswald (…) may have been inspired to assassinate the president if, as seemed probable, he read an article on Monday, September 9, in the local newspaper, that suggested Castro was targeted for murder by the United States.”

Duran Case
Shenon and Sabato missed that the Mexican Federal Security Directorate (DFS) immediately and exhaustively interrogated Silvia Duran at the request of the CIA. The very night of the assassination, Chief of Station Win Scott asked CIA asset Gustavo Díaz-Ordaz (LITEMPO-2), outgoing Interior Secretary and incoming President of Mexico, to hold Duran “incommunicado until she gives all details of Oswald” (NARA 104-10422-10090). Langley allowed the Station to “provide questions to the Mexican interrogators” (NARA 104-10102-10145).

On the other hand, the affair with Oswald was a slander by a cousin of Duran´s husband, the well-known anti-Communist Mexican writer Elena Garro. It was reported by CIA contract agent June Cobb (AMUPAS-1), who was renting a room from Garro, but the Legal Attaché (FBI) Nathan Ferris rightly dismissed it after having interviewed Garro and her daughter twice in November 1964. They simply “failed to substantiate the allegations” (NARA 104-10007-10043).

On a related 1965-CIA memo (NARA 104-10404-10320), the Deputy Chief of Station, Alan White, wrote down: “I don’t know what FBI did in November 64, but the Garros have been talking about this for a long time and she is said to be extremely bright.” Scott ruled out White’s concern with a lapidary remark: “She is also nuts.” Apart from Cobb, Garro drove other nuts as well. Charles W. Thomas, a political officer at the U.S. Embassy, raised the fake story with the Secretary of State William Rogers in 1969. Philip Shenon resorted to it in A Cruel and Shocking Act (Henry Holt and Co., 2013). Anyway, a slander never becomes a fact by mere repetition.

Garro refused to appear before the House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), while Duran accepted and was thoroughly interviewed by an HSCA panel in 1978. She was adamant that her one and only encounter with Oswald took place at the Cuban consulate on September 27, 1963. As consular clerk, she provided nothing but the standard service related to his application for an in-transit visa to go on to the Soviet Union.

Duran had made the same statement to her Mexican interrogators, and Scott even reported to Langley “she was perfectly willing travel to the United States to confront Oswald.” Notwithstanding, Duran couldn´t get through to the Warren Commission because Scott remarked on the same report: “Present plan in passing info to Warren Commission is to eliminate mention on telephone taps, in order to protect continuing ops.” (NARA 104-10020-10018). The CIA phone-tapping operation LIENVOY involved three calls linked to Duran (NARA 104-10413-10074):

1) Friday, September 27, 16:00 hours. The Soviet Consulate received a call from the Cuban Consulate. Duran said she had there a U.S. citizen who had requested a transit visa to Cuba because he is going to the USSR.

2) Friday, September 27, 16:26 hours. The Cuban Consulate received a call from the Soviet Embassy. The caller asked Duran if the American has been there and she replied: “Yes, he is still here.”

3) Saturday, September 28, ca. 12:00 hours. The Soviet Consulate received a call from a woman who identified herself as Silvia Duran at the Cuban Consulate. She handed the phone over to an American who said in Russian: “I was in your Embassy and spoke to your consul (…) I went to the Cuban Embassy to ask them for my address, because they have it.” From the first two calls, the CIA immediately learned what Duran would later declare to the Mexican authorities and the HSCA; from the third call, a burning issue cropped up: Duran and the American had been impersonated. The Cuban Consulate was closed on Saturdays and Duran didn’t work overtime on September 28, 1963. The CIA transcriber, Boris Tarasoff, firstly noted the American was speaking in “hardly recognizable Russian” and then identified him as the same person in two further calls:

4) Tuesday, October 1, 10:31 hours. A man outside (MO) called the Soviet Military Attaché Office speaking in broken Russian: “Hello, I was at your place last Saturday and talked to your Consul (…) I wanted to ask you if there is anything new.” He was given the phone number 15-60-55.

5) Tuesday, October 1, 10:35 hours. MO said in broken Russian: “Hello, this LEE OSWALD speaking. I was at your place last Saturday and spoke to a Consul (…) but I don’t remember the name… A Soviet replied: Kostikov. He is dark? MO: Yes. My name is OSWALD. SOVIET: Just a minute. I’ll find out (…) Nothing has been received as yet. MO: And what… (SOVIET hangs up). Oswald was fluent in Russian. His own wife Marina said, “he had a pretty good Russian tongue, and she thought at first he was a Baltic Russian.” (NARA 157-10014.10003). After giving on Saturday a curious statement about the Cuban Embassy having his address, which suggests a safe house of the Cuban Intelligence Service (CuIS), the imposter eventually placed on record both the name Oswald and a meeting with Valeriy Kostikov, a KGB officer reported by the CIA to the Warren Commission as “believed to work” for Department XIII, responsible of executive action, including assassination, although neither the CIA nor the FBI could find “any information to fully support [it].” (NARA 124-10369-10063).

Oswald’s impersonation in Mexico City is a key pre-assassination fact. It reinforces the hypothesis of CIA insiders forging Oswald’s linkages to the CuIS and the KGB. Thereupon, framing him up in Dallas and covering the deed up would be part of the natural course of events.

 

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